Day 2 Extra Life Challenge – Qwirkle

Day 2 of our Extra Life challenge has now come and gone! First off I want to thank everyone who has shown interest so far in our activities. So far we’ve raised $25 of our $500 goal in support of Toronto’s Sick Kids hospital. I would really appreciate if you donated and you can do so here.

Rachel lost on day 1 so she selected tonight’s game. She thought last night’s choice was a safe bet so she put some real thought in to her selection tonight. What’d she go with? Qwirkle, one of her long term favourites! We played Qwirkle twice in last year’s challenge and Rachel won both of them. She also knows I really don’t enjoy the game (although we found out that’s because we had a rule wrong to a certain extent tonight!).

Qwirkle is a game that’s like scrabble but instead of words you have colours and symbols. Players have six tiles at a time and put together combinations of symbols and colours to try and get points. Each colour/symbol piece is in the bag 3 times and part of the game is balancing what’s available with the shape of the board.

As I mentioned earlier I historically haven’t enjoyed this game because it feels too slow. Turns out you can skip your turn and put some tiles back in the bag to redraw up to six. That made a huge difference and we had a very competitive back and forth game that we both really enjoyed.

Our board also looked way better than it ever has!

A very pretty Qwirkle board

I managed to get the first Qwirkle in the game and I was feeling pretty good for the first 1/3 of the game, but true to form Rachel came on strong. I started clawing back in the very end but I just couldn’t catch up to Rachel.

In the end Rachel ended up winning 324 to 246. This was personal best scores for both of us by far. We are proving to be very competitive and focused this year and we’re both loving it.

So that’s Day 2 down! Come back tomorrow when I pick a game to try and get control of week 1 back in my hands!